Very many thanks, Meriel (if only I'd made the effort to get to Cork in 
February!) - and to several others who replied to the list or to me 
directly, all of whom I hope I've acknowledged. Meriel gives a textbook 
description of these strange features, for anyone who's not come across 
them before (as I hadn't, really, prior to being sent these moss samples).

Several very helpful leads from todays posts but other pointers always 
welcome!

Allan


On Apr 13 2007, McClatchie, Meriel wrote:

>Hi Allan,
>
> I have looked at a few of these sites in the NW of Ireland. For those of 
> you not familiar with burnt mounds, they usually consist of kidney-shaped 
> mounds of burnt stone and charcoal in a dark soil matrix, often 
> associated with troughs, hearths and occasionally structural features. It 
> is believed that the stones were heated with fire, sometimes in formal 
> hearths, and then transferred to water-filled troughs in order to heat 
> the water. Burnt mounds can date from the Neolithic up to the historic 
> period, but many date to the Middle Bronze Age in Ireland (1700-1200 BC).
>
> Burnt mounds often produce a few waterlogged hazelnut shells, and maybe a 
> few waterlogged seeds of Rubus sp., Carex sp. and various other plants 
> that you might find in scrubby, wet, boggy environments! Cultivated 
> remains are very rare. Very large quantities of charcoal can be found, 
> but charred non-wood plant macro-remains are usually rare. Mosses have 
> turned up on a quite a few of these sites, but I am not familiar with any 
> published work in Ireland that has been done to identify the actual types 
> of mosses present. It has been suggested that some of the troughs may 
> have been lined with mosses, the mosses acting as a 'filter' so that the 
> water in the trough remains clean.
>
> You could try getting in touch with John O Neill, who works at the School 
> of Archaeology, University College Dublin (check their website for his 
> contact details). John looked at burnt mounds for his PhD, and probably 
> knows more than anyone in Ireland about them! He would have a better idea 
> of the range of analyses that has been carried out on these sites.
>
> Also, as previously mentioned, Steve Davis at University College Dublin 
> was part of a team carrying out environmental analyses on burnt mounds. 
> He recently presented a paper on this topic at an Association for 
> Environmental Archaeology meeting in Cork. See his abstract at: 
> http://www.ucc.ie/en/aea2007/Abstracts/
>
>Best wishes,
>Meriel McClatchie.
> 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: The archaeobotany mailing list
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Sent: 13/04/2007 09:15
>Subject: Burnt mounds!
>
>I am currently looking at some samples of moss preserved beneath wooden
>troughs within each of seven burnt mounds (aka fulachta fiadh) from a
>series of sites in Counties Mayo and Roscommon in W Ireland, and am
>checking for comparanda. I know large numbers of these mounds have been
>examined archaeologically from Ireland - and elsewhere in the British
>Isles - but have not so far found any reports on preserved moss layers
>(most archaeobotanical work associated with these mounds deals only with
>small amounts of charcoal, so far as I can see). Does anyone have any
>knowledge of studies in which waterlogged material OF ANY KIND has been
>encountered and examined archaeobotanically? 
>
>Many thanks, in anticipation! 
>
>Allan 
>

-- Dr Allan Hall, English Heritage Senior Research Fellow, Department of 
Archaeology, University of York, The King's Manor, York YO1 7EP, U.K. Tel. 
+44 1904 434950/fax: 433902